It’s hard for me to describe the process of making a book of photographs. Not literally, but its source, the way it takes shape over time. Maybe it’s something like this: A sensibility seems to conspire with realities around me, in slow, annoyingly non-linear ways, to create something that I may not even recognize as my own, and with which I may not initially be comfortable, but that eventually (and with work) looks increasingly familiar and true. This likely clarifies nothing. But bouts of intuition are punctuated by reflection and analysis, which *does eventually inform the intuition, and vice-a-versa. It’s not always clear, or enjoyable, when I’m in the middle of it, but in retrospect, and as clarity approaches, it feels like a strange and lucky thing.
It’s an equally lucky and strange thing, then, to encounter a remarkably articulate piece of writing that seems to have internalized the forces and realities that somehow worked on you, but that clarifies and contextualizes the result in ways you yourself could not have. Andrew Witt’s new book from
@mitpress ‘Lost Days, Endless Nights’ presents case studies of nine artists—including Catherine Opie, Allan Sekula, Agnès Varda, John Divola, Paul Sepuya, Dana Lixenberg and Guadalupe Rosales—each of whom have made work in and about contemporary Los Angeles. I am lucky to say that one of the chapters is devoted to my work.
Here, I’ve excerpted a few parts where Witt discusses representation and photographing on the margins of society—a difficult topic I’m grateful he takes on.
Link in profile to the book.
@andrew.c.witt @mitpress
“‘Lost Days, Endless Nights’ tells a history from below—an account of the lives of the forgotten and dispossessed of Los Angeles: the unemployed, the precariously employed, the evicted, the alienated, the unhoused, the anxious, the exhausted. Through an analysis of abandoned archival works, experimental films, and other projects, Andrew Witt offers an expansive account of the artists who have lived or worked in Los Angeles, delving into the region’s history and geography, highlighting its racial, gender, and class conflicts.“
